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Ambrose  Bierce 


Ambrose  Bierce 


By 
Vincent  Starrett 


Chicago 

Walter  M.  Hill 
1920 


This  first  edition  is  limited  to  250  copies, 
of  which  this  is  No.     .  ^,£ 


THE  TORCH    PRESS 

CEDAR    RAPIDS 

IOWA 


TO 

W.  C.  MORROW 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

For  valuable  reminiscences  and  suggestions,  ex 
tremely  helpful  in  the  preparation  of  this  volume 
and  its  contents,  I  am  indebted  to  many  persons ;  par 
ticularly  to  W.  C.  Morrow,  to  Miss  Carrie  Chris 
tiansen,  to  Mrs.  Josephine  Clifford  McCrackin,  to 
Helen  Bierce  Isgrigg,  and  to  Walter  Neale,  Major 
Bierce's  publisher.  I  am  happy  here  to  give  public 
utterance  to  my  gratitude.  A  number  of  character 
istic  anecdotes  are  quoted  from  Bierce's  autobio 
graphic  vignettes,  in  his  "Collected  Works." 

V.  S. 


NOTE 

More  than  six  years  of  speculation  and  ap 
prehension  have  passed  since  the  disappear 
ance  of  Ambrose  Bierce.  Sanguine  hopes 
long  have  dwindled,  and  only  the  frailest 
possibility  survives  that  he  yet  lives  in  some 
green  recess  of  the  Mexican  mountains,  or 
some  tropical  Arcadia  in  South  America. 
Assuming  that  he  is  dead,  as  we  must  assume 
who  do  not  look  for  a  miracle,  he  has  ful 
filled  a  prophecy  made  years  ago  by  a  writing 
man  of  his  acquaintance : 

"Some  day  he  will  go  up  on  Mount  Horeb 
and  forget  to  come  down.  No  man  will  see 
his  death-struggle,  for  he'll  cover  his  face 
with  his  cloak  of  motley,  and  if  he  sends  a 
wireless  it  will  be  this :  '  'Tis  a  grave  sub 
ject.'  " 

There  has  been  no  wireless. 

In  the  circumstances,  it  is  perhaps  pre 
sumptuously  early  to  attempt  an  estimate  of 
the  man  and  his  work;  but  already  both  fools 
and  angels  have  rushed  in,  and  the  atmos 
phere  is  thick  with  rumor  and  legend.  The 
present  appraisal,  at  least  is  not  fortuitous, 
and  its  stated  facts  have  the  merit  of  sobriety 
and  authority. 


I.    THE  MAN 

There  are  many  persons  who  do  not  care  for  the 
writings  of  Ambrose  Bierce,  and  thousands  —  it  is 
shocking  to  reflect  —  who  never  have  heard  of  him. 
The  Hon.  Franklin  K.  Lane,  erstwhile  Secretary  of 
the  Interior,  has  gone  on  record  as  thinking  him  "a 
hideous  monster,  so  like  the  mixture  of  dragon,  liz 
ard,  bat,  and  snake  as  to  be  unnameable,"  a  character 
ization  almost  Biercian  in  its  cumulative  invective. 
When  Mr.  Lane  made  this  remark,  or  wrote  it 
down  (whichever  may  have  been  the  case),  he  said 
it  with  pious  horror  and  intense  dislike;  but  when 
Gertrude  Atherton  asserted  that  Bierce  had  the 
most  brutal  imagination  she  had  encountered  in 
print,  she  was  paying  him  a  compliment,  and  she  in 
tended  to.  Out  of  those  two  appraisals  we  may 
extract  the  truth  —  that  Bierce  was  a  mighty  artist 
in  his  field,  with  little  or  no  concern  for  the  reac 
tions  of  weaker  vessels  to  his  art. 

A  great  many  persons  knew  Ambrose  Bierce,  and 
some  loved  him,  and  some  hated  and  feared  him. 
All,  from  their  own  point  of  view,  had  excellent 
reason  for  their  quality  of  regard.  Save  for  those 
who  made  up  this  catholic  and  vari-minded  assem- 


j2  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

blage,  few  persons  can  speak  of  Ambrose  Bierce,  the 
man.  The  story  of  Ambrose  Bierce  the  novelist, 
the  satirist,  the  humorist,  and  the  poet,  is  to  a  large 
degree  the  story  of  Ambrose  Bierce  the  man ;  but  to 
a  larger  degree  is  the  story  of  Ambrose  Bierce  the 
man  the  story  of  Ambrose  Bierce  the  novelist,  sat 
irist,  humorist,  and  poet. 

It  is  generally  known  that  he  served  throughout 
the  Civil  War.  He  emerged  a  Major,  brevetted 
for  distinguished  services,  and  with  an  honorable 
scar  upon  his  body.  Twice  he  had  rescued  wounded 
comrades  from  the  battlefield,  at  the  risk  of  his 
life ;  at  Kenesaw  Mountain  he  was  severely  wound 
ed  in  the  head.  He  came  out  of  the  conflict  a  sol 
dier,  with  a  decided  leaning  toward  literature,  and 
the  story  goes  that  he  tossed  up  a  coin  to  determine 
his  career.  Instead  of  "head"  or  "tail"  he  may 
have  called  "sword"  or  "pen,"  but  the  story  does  not 
so  inform  us.  Whatever  the  deciding  influence  may 
have  been,  Bierce  commenced  journalist  and  author 
in  San  Francisco,  in  1866,  as  editor  of  the  News 
Letter.  Then,  in  1872,  he  went  to  London,  where, 
for  four  years,  or  until  1876,  he  was  on  the  staff  of 
Fun,  edited  by  the  younger  Tom  Hood. 

In  London,  the  editors  of  Fun,  amazed  at  the 
young  man's  fertile  ability,  conceived  the  notion  that 
he  could  write  anything,  and  accordingly  piled  his 
desk  with  a  weird  assortment  of  old  woodcuts, 
minus  their  captions;  they  requested  that  he  "write 


THE  MAN  13 

things"  to  fit  them.  The  "things"  Bierce  wrote 
astonished  England,  and  Pharisees  squirmed  beneath 
his  lash  as  they  had  not  done  since  the  days  of  Swift. 
A  cruel  finger  was  on  secret  ulcers,  and  the  Ameri 
can's  satires  quickly  gained  for  him,  among  his  col 
leagues,  the  name  of  "Bitter  Bierce."  The  stinging 
tales  and  fables  he  produced  to  order  are  those 
found  in  the  volume  called  Cobwebs  From  an 
Empty  Skull,  reputed  to  be  by  Dod  Grile,  and  pub 
lished  in  1874.  A  year  previously,  he  had  published 
The  Fiend's  Delight,  and  Nuggets  and  Dust,  caustic 
little  volumes  largely  made  up  of  earlier  diabolisms 
from  California  journals.  His  intimates  of  the 
period  included  such  joyous  spirits  as  Hood,  George 
Augustus  Sala,  and  Capt.  Mayne  Reid,  the  boys' 
novelist;  this  quartette,  with  others,  frequented  a 
taproom  in  Ludgate  Station,  and  gave  itself  over,  as 
Bierce  humorously  confesses,  "to  shedding  the  blood 
of  the  grape." 
Thus  Bierce: 

We  worked  too  hard,  dined  too  well,  fre 
quented  too  many  clubs  and  went  to  bed  too 
late  in  the  forenoon.  In  short,  we  diligently, 
conscientiously  and  with  a  perverse  satisfaction 
burned  the  candle  of  life  at  both  ends  and  in 
the  middle. 

He  relates  some  delightful  episodes  of  the  period 
in  his  Bits  of  Autobiography,  the  first  volume  in  his 
Collected  Works;  the  funniest  and  one  of  the  most 


14  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

typical,  perhaps,  is  that  concerning  his  difficulties 
with  John  Camden  Hotten,  a  publisher  with  whom 
Mark  Twain  was  having  trouble  of  his  own  at 
about  the  same  time  —  although  at  a  greater  dis 
tance.  Hotten  owed  Bierce  money  for  certain  work, 
and  Bierce,  usually  financially  embarrassed,  hound 
ed  Hotten  for  it  until  the  publisher,  in  despair,  sent 
the  implacable  creditor  to  negotiate  with  his  (Hot- 
ten's)  manager.  Bierce  talked  vividly  for  two 
hours,  at  the  end  of  which  time  the  crestfallen  man 
ager  capitulated  and  produced  a  check  already  made 
out  and  signed.  It  bore  date  of  the  following  Sat 
urday.  The  rest  of  the  story  belongs  to  Bierce : 

Before  Saturday  came,  Hotten  proceeded  to 
die  of  a  pork  pie  in  order  to  beat  me  out  of  my 
money.  Knowing  nothing  of  this,  I  strolled 
out  to  his  house  in  Highgate,  hoping  to  get  an 
advance,  as  I  was  in  great  need  of  cash.  On 
being  told  of  his  demise  I  was  inexpressibly 
shocked,  for  my  cheque  was  worthless.  There 
was  a  hope,  however,  that  the  bank  had  not 
heard.  So  I  called  a  cab  and  drove  furiously 
bank-ward.  Unfortunately  my  gondolier  steered 
me  past  Ludgate  Station,  in  the  bar  whereof 
our  Fleet  Street  gang  of  writers  had  a  private 
table.  I  disembarked  for  a  mug  of  bitter.  Un 
fortunately,  too,  Sala,  Hood,  and  others  of  the 
gang  were  in  their  accustomed  places.  I  sat  at 
board  and  related  the  sad  event.  The  deceased 
had  not  in  life  enjoyed  our  favour,  and  I  blush 
to  say  we  all  fell  to  making  questionable  epi- 


THE  MAN  15 

taphs  to  him.  I  recall  one  by  Sala  which  ran 
thus: 

Hotten, 

Rotten, 

Forgotten. 

At  the  close  of  the  rites,  several  hours  later,  I 
resumed  my  movements  against  the  bank.  Too 
late  —  the  old  story  of  the  hare  and  the  tor 
toise  was  told  again!  The  heavy  news  had 
overtaken  and  passed  me  as  I  loitered  by  the 
wayside.  I  attended  the  funeral,  at  which  I 
felt  more  than  I  cared  to  express. 

The  appearance  of  his  Cobwebs  From  an  Empty 
Skull  made  Bierce  for  a  time  the  chief  wit  and  hu 
morist  of  England,  and,  combined  with  his  satirical 
work  on  Fun,  brought  about  his  engagement  by 
friends  of  the  exiled  Empress  Eugenie  to  conduct  a 
journal  against  her  enemies,  who  purposed  to  make 
her  refuge  in  England  untenable  by  newspaper  at 
tacks.  It  appeared  that  James  Mortimer,  who  was 
later  to  found  and  edit  the  Figaro,  was  in  the  habit 
of  visiting  the  exiled  Empress  at  Chislehurst,  and 
he  it  was  who  learned  of  a  threat  by  M.  Henri 
Rochefort  to  start  his  paper,  La  Lanterne,  in  Eng 
land;  Rochefort,  who  had  persistently  attacked  the 
Empress  in  Paris.  Mortimer  suggested  the  found 
ing  and  registering  in  London  of  a  paper  called  The 
Lantern,  which  was  done  and  Bierce  was  made  its 
editor.  But  the  struggle  never  came;  Rochefort, 
outwitted,  knew  the  game  was  up,  and  did  not  put 


16  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

his  threat  into  execution,  although  Bierce,  for  a  few 
numbers,  had  the  delight  of  abusing  the  Frenchman 
to  his  heart's  content,  a  pursuit  he  found  extremely 
congenial. 

Bierce  the  satirist  was  for  a  time  in  his  element; 
but  there  was  little  material  wealth  to  be  gained  in 
London,  and  at  times  he  was  pretty  hard  up.  He 
revived  his  failing  fortunes  for  a  short  period  by 
writing  and  publishing  his  series  of  "Little  Johnny" 
stories  —  humorous,  misspelled  essays  in  zoology, 
supposed  to  be  the  work  of  a  small  boy.  These 
were  popular  and  added  color  to  his  name;  but 
Bierce's  mind  was  now  turning  backward  to  the 
country  he  had  deserted,  and  in  1876  he  returned  to 
San  Francisco. 

He  remained  then  on  the  coast  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  save  for  a  brief  period  of  mining  near 
Deadwood,  South  Dakota,  where  his  adventures 
with  road-agents  and  other  bad  men  were  hair- 
raising.  On  a  night  in  1880  he  was  driving  in  a 
light  wagon  through  a  wild  part  of  the  Black  Hills. 
The  wagon  carried  thirty  thousand  dollars  in  gold 
belonging  to  the  mining  company  of  which  he  was 
manager,  and  beside  him  on  the  wagon  seat  was 
Boone  May,  a  famous  gunman  who  was  under  in 
dictment  for  murder.  May  had  been  paroled  on 
Bierce's  promise  that  he  would  see  him  into  custody 
again.  The  notorius  gunman  sat,  huddled  in  his 
rubber  poncho,  with  his  rifle  between  his  knees;  he 


THE  MAN  17 

was  acting  as  guard  of  the  company's  gold.  Al 
though  Bierce  thought  him  somewhat  off  guard,  he 
said  nothing. 

There  came  a  sudden  shout:  "Throw  up  your 
hands!" 

Bierce  reached  for  his  revolver,  but  it  was  need 
less.  Almost  before  the  words  had  left  the  high 
wayman's  lips,  with  the  quickness  of  a  cat  May  had 
hurled  himself  backward  over  the  seat,  face  upward, 
and  with  the  muzzle  of  his  weapon  within  a  yard  of 
the  bandit's  throat,  had  fired  a  shot  that  forever 
ruined  the  interrupter's  usefulness  as  a  road-agent. 

Bierce  returned  again  to  San  Francisco.  Through 
the  warp  and  woof,  then,  of  certain  California  jour 
nals,  for  many  years,  ran  the  glittering  thread  of  his 
genius,  and  to  this  period  belongs  much  of  his  finest 
and  strongest  work.  He  became  a  mighty  censor 
who  made  and  unmade  men  and  women,  a  War 
wick  of  the  pen.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that 
corrupt  politicians,  hypocritical  philanthropists  and 
clergymen,  self-worshipers,  notoriety  seekers,  and 
pretenders  of  every  description  trembled  at  his  name. 
He  wielded  an  extraordinary  power;  his  pen  hung, 
a  Damoclean  sword,  over  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  Pacific  coast.  Those  who  had  cause  to  fear  his 
wrath  opened  their  morning  papers  with  something 
like  horror.  He  wrote  "epitaphs"  to  persons  not 
yet  dead,  of  such  a  nature  —  had  they  been  dead  — 
as  to  make  them  turn  in  their  graves.  Many  of  his 


i8  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

poetic  quips  were  venomous  to  a  degree,  and  he 
greeted  Oscar  Wilde,  on  the  poet's  arrival  in  Amer 
ica,  in  1882,  with  a  blast  of  invective  that  all  but 
paralyzed  that  ready  wit.  His  pet  abominations 
were  James  Whitcomb  Riley  and  Ella  Wheeler 
Wilcox.  In  the  earlier  days  of  his  power  an  assault 
in  print  was  believed  sufficient  cause  for  a  pistoled 
reply,  and  Bierce  was  always  a  marked  man ;  but  he 
was  utterly  fearless,  and  as  he  was  known  to  be  a 
dead  shot,  himself,  his  life  always  was  "spared"  by 
the  victims  of  his  attacks.  His  vocabulary  of  invec 
tive  was  the  widest  and  most  vitriolic  of  any  modern 
journalist,  but  it  was  not  billingsgate;  Bierce  never 
penned  a  line  that  was  not  impeccable.  His  wit  was 
diabolic  —  Satanic  —  but  he  was  always  the  scholar, 
and  he  always  bowed  politely  before  he  struck.  The 
suave  fierceness  of  his  attack  is  unique  in  contem 
poraneous  literature. 

He  cherished  no  personal  enmities,  in  the  ordi 
nary  sense,  for  his  attacks  were  largely  upon  prin 
ciples  promoted  by  men,  rather  than  upon  the  men 
themselves.  One  who  knew  him  once  said :  "I  look 
upon  Bierce  as  a  literary  giant.  I  don't  think  he 
really  means  to  walk  rough-shod  over  people,  any 
more  than  a  lion  means  to  be  rough  with  a  mouse. 
It  is  only  that  the  lion  wonders  how  anything  so 
small  can  be  alive,  and  he  is  amused  by  its  antics." 
With  his  clairvoyant  vision,  his  keen  sense  of  justice, 


THE  MAN  19 

and  his  extraordinary  honesty,  what  an  international 
fool-killer  he  would  have  made! 

Yet  this  fierce  and  hated  lampooner  had  his  softer 
side,  which  he  displayed  to  those  he  loved  and  who 
loved  him ;  and  these  were  not  too  few.  One  of  his 
oldest  friends  writes,  in  a  letter:  "His  private  gen 
tleness,  refinement,  tenderness,  kindness,  unselfish 
ness,  are  my  most  cherished  memories  of  him.  He 
was  deeply  —  I  may  say  childishly  —  human.  .  . 
It  was  in  these  intimate  things,  the  aspects  which 
the  world  never  saw,  that  he  made  himself  so  deeply 
loved  by  the  few  whom  he  held  close.  For  he  was 
exceedingly  reserved.  Under  no  circumstances  could 
he  ever  be  dragged  into  physical  view  before  the 
crowds  that  hated,  feared  or  admired  him.  He  had 
no  vanity;  his  insolence  toward  the  mob  was  de 
tached,  for  he  was  an  aristocrat  to  the  bottom  of 
him.  But  he  would  have  given  his  coat  to  his  bit 
terest  enemy  who  happened  to  be  cold." 

His  humor,  as  distinct  from  his  wit,  was  queer 
and  picturesque,  and  was  a  distinguished  quality. 
In  his  column  of  "Prattle"  in  the  San  Francisco 
Examiner,  he  once  remarked  that  something  was  "as 
funny  as  a  brick  ship."  A  friend  giggled  with  de 
light  at  the  conception,  and  repeated  it  to  others; 
but  to  his  dismay  he  could  find  none  who  would  en 
joy  it.  "A  brick  ship !"  they  repeated.  "That  isn't 
funny;  it's  simply  foolish."  At  another  time, 
Bierce  announced  that  he  regarded  every  married 


20  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

man  as  his  natural  enemy ;  and  the  Philistines  raved, 
saying  he  was  evil,  nasty,  and  a  hopeless  beast.  The 
boyish  fun  of  his  remarks  seemed  always  lost  on  the 
crowd.  Again,  when  the  missing-word  nonsense 
was  going  on,  he  began  to  say  obscure  things,  in  his 
column,  about  a  poem  which  Dr.  David  Starr  Jor 
dan  had  just  published.  At  length  he  inaugurated 
a  missing-word  contest  of  his  own,  somewhat  as  fol 
lows:  "Dr.  Jordan  is  a ,  and  a  ,  and  a 

."  He  invited  the  public  to  send  him  its 

guesses.  Heaven  knows  what  replies  he  received; 
but  the  Professor  was  worried,  and  asked  Bierce's 
friends  why  the  writer  was  getting  after  him.  Fi 
nally  the  missing  words  were  supplied:  "Dr.  Jor 
dan  is  a  gentleman,  and  a  scholar^  and  a  poet." 
Bierce  supplied  and  published  them  himself. 

Once  a  lawyer,  whose  remarkable  name  was  Otto 
Turn  Suden,  broke  out  with  some  public  matter  that 
Bierce  didn't  like.  Accordingly,  he  wrote  a  little 
jingle  about  Turn  Suden,  the  burthen  of  which  was 
"Turn  Suden,  turn  duden,  turn  dey!"  It  completely 
silenced  poor  Turn. 

It  is  not  unnatural,  however,  that  Bierce  should 
have  been  misunderstood,  and  people  always  were 
misunderstanding  him.  Standing,  one  day,  with  a 
friend,  on  a  high  elevation  at  a  midwinter  fair,  he 
looked  down  at  a  vast  crowd  swarming  and  sweat 
ing  far  below  him.  Suddnly,  coming  out  of  a  rev 
erie,  he  said:  "Wouldn't  it  be  fun  to  turn  loose  a 


THE  MAN  21 

machine  gun  into  that  crowd!"  He  added  a  swift 
and  droll  picture  of  the  result,  which  sent  his  friend 
into  convulsions,  the  latter  knowing  perfectly  well 
that  Bierce  would  not  have  harmed  a  single  hair  on 
a  head  in  that  swarm.  But  suppose  his  friend  had 
been  no  friend  at  all  —  had  just  met  the  writer,  and 
did  not  know  him  for  what  he  was!  That  was 
Bierce's  way,  however,  and  it  ran  into  print.  Peo 
ple  could  never  understand  him  —  some  people. 

Even  his  friends  did  not  escape  his  lash.  How 
ever  deep  his  affection  for  them,  he  never  spared 
them  in  public  if  they  stepped  awry.  But  they  were 
inclined  to  think  it  an  honor  when  he  got  after  them 
in  print,  and,  naturally,  there  was  an  admiring  lit 
erary  coterie  that  hailed  him  as  master.  I  suspect 
they  flattered  him,  although  I  cannot  imagine  him 
accepting  their  flattery.  And  he  was  a  Master. 
One  of  this  group,  perhaps  the  closest  of  his  literary 
friends,  once  sent  him  a  story  for  criticism.  Bierce 
returned  it  with  the  laconic  remark  that  his  friend 
"must  have  written  it  for  the  Waverly  Magazine 
when  he  was  a  school-girl." 

Among  his  friends  and  pupils  were  the  poets, 
George  Sterling  and  Herman  Scheffauer,  and  he 
was  on  the  best  of  terms  with  the  Bohemian  crowd 
that  made  old  San  Francisco  a  sort  of  American 
Bagdad ;  but  I  believe  he  never  participated  in  their 
cafe  dinners,  where  they  were  gazed  at  and  mar 
veled  over  by  the  fringing  crowd.  He  was  uncon- 


22  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

scious  of  his  own  greatness,  in  any  offensive  sense, 
and  either  ignored  or  failed  to  see  the  startled  or  ad 
miring  looks  given  him  when  people  were  told, 
"'That  is  Ambrose  Bierce."  He  was  not  a  show 
man.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  women  adored  him, 
for  he  was  cavalierly  handsome;  but  he  was  not 
much  of  a  ladies'  man.  As  I  have  suggested,  how 
ever,  he  was  always  a  gentleman  and  gentlemen  are 
none  too  plentiful. 

An  especially  interesting  chapter  in  his  journal 
istic  career  began  in  1896,  when  a  great  fight  was 
being  waged  in  the  nation's  capital.  The  late  Collis 
P.  Huntington  was  conducting  a  powerful  lobby  to 
pass  his  "refunding  bill,"  releasing  him  and  his  asso 
ciates  of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad  from  their  ob 
ligations  to  the  government.  Bierce  was  asked  by 
William  Randolph  Hearst  to  go  to  Washington  for 
the  Examiner,  to  give  what  aid  he  might  in  defeat 
ing  the  scheme.  A  Washington  newspaper  man 
said  to  Huntington:  "Bierce  is  in  town." 

"How  much  does  he  want?"  cynically  asked 
Huntington. 

This  insult  was  reported  to  Bierce,  who  replied: 
"Please  go  back  and  tell  him  that  my  price  is  about 
seventy-five  million  dollars.  If,  when  he  is  ready  to 
pay,  I  happen  to  be  out  of  town,  he  may  hand  it  to 
my  friend,  the  Treasurer  of  the  United  States." 

The  contest  was  notable.  As  in  the  Eugenie  case, 
Bierce  was  in  his  element.  He  wrote  so  fast  and  so 


THE  MAN  23 

furiously  that  it  became  a  whimsical  saying  that  he 
wrote  with  a  specially  prepared  pencil,  because  his 
pens  became  red  hot  and  his  ink  boiled.  The  result 
was  happy,  whatever  he  used,  for  he  drove  the  cor- 
ruptionist  gang  out  of  the  Capitol,  and  forced  a 
withdrawal  of  the  insolent  measure.  It  was  not  so 
long  ago  that  the  last  installment  of  the  entire  debt 
was  handed  to  Bierce's  "friend,"  the  Treasurer  of 
the  United  States. 

Later,  Bierce  removed  to  Washington,  where  he 
spent  his  last  years.  He  was  already  a  celebrity 
when  he  came  there  to  live,  and  was  more  or  less  of 
a  lion ;  but  his  anger  always  was  great  when  he  fan 
cied  anyone  was  showing  him  off.  It  is  said  that  he 
indignantly  declined  to  attend  a  theater  with  a 
friend,  in  New  York,  because  seats  had  been  pro 
cured  in  a  box  for  the  party  that  was  to  accompany 
them.  Another  story  tells  of  an  alleged  scene  he 
made  in  a  Washington  drawing-room,  when  his 
host  presented  a  street  railway  magnate.  The  car 
baron  extended  his  hand. 

"No !'  thundered  Bierce,  in  magnificent  rage.  "I 
wouldn't  take  your  black  hand  for  all  the  money 
you  could  steal  in  the  next  ten  years !  I  ride  in  one 
of  your  cars  every  night  and  always  am  compelled 
to  stand  —  there's  never  a  seat  for  me." 

And  the  story  goes  that  the  black  hand  was 
speedily  withdrawn.  I  do  not  vouch  for  the  tale; 
but  it  sounds  a  bit  tru-ish,  if  not  entirely  so. 


24  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

It  has  been  remarked  time  and  again  that  Bierce 
was  embittered  by  failure  of  the  world  to  appreciate 
his  work,  by  his  "obscurity."  That  is  untrue.  Rec 
ognition  was  slow,  but  he  was  certainly  not  un 
known;  indeed  if  a  multiplicity  of  attacks  upon  a 
man  may  make  him  famous,  Bierce  was  famous.  It 
is  the  critics  who  are  to  blame  for  this  myth ;  many 
attacked  him,  and  many,  eager  to  help  him,  spoke 
mournfully  of  his  great  and  unappreciated  genius; 
and  after  a  time  the  story  stuck.  In  a  breezy  jin 
gle,  Bierce  himself  summed  up  this  aspect  of  the 
case,  as  follows: 

My,  how  my  fame  rings  out  in  every  zone  — 
A  thousand  critics  shouting,  "He's  unknown!" 
It  is  probably  true,  also,  that  the  foreword  to  his 
first  book  of  stories,  Tales  of  Soldiers  and  Civilians, 
had  something  to  do  with  the  legend : 

Denied    existence    by    the    chief    publishing 
houses  of  the  country,  this  book  owes  itself  to 
Mr.  E.  L.   G.  Steele,   merchant,  of  this  city 
[San    Francisco].      In   attesting   Mr.    Steele's 
faith  in  his  judgment  and  his  friend,  it  will 
serve  its  author's  main  and  best  ambition. 
But,  as  the  years  went  by,  the  cognoscenti  came  to 
know  him  very  well  indeed.    And  those  who  knew 
him  best,  in  his  later  years,  assert  that  he  was  not 
morose  and  unhappy,  although  he  was  a  considerable 
sufferer  from  asthma,  and  had  tried  various  climates 
without  result. 

Despite  all  his  scoffings  at  clergymen  and  church 


THE  MAN  25 

folk,  and  despite  his  so-called  heterodox  opinions, 
Bierce  made  profession  of  a  profound  Christian 
faith.  Even  so,  the  orthodox  will  frown  at  it,  but 
the  man  who  wrote  so  exalted  a  tribute  to  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  could  hardly  have  been  the  hopeless  ag 
nostic  he  was  often  pictured. 

"This  is  my  ultimate  and  determinate  sense  of 
right,"  he  wrote.  "  'What  under  the  circumstances 
would  Christ  have  done  ?'  —  the  Christ  of  the  New 
Testament,  not  the  Christ  of  the  commentators, 
theologians,  priests,  and  parsons." 

And  his  friend,  Edwin  Markham,  said  of  him: 
"He  is  a  composite  mind  —  a  blending  of  Hafiz 
the  Persian,  Swift,  Poe,  Thoreau,  with  sometimes  a 
gleam  of  the  Galilean." 


II.    THE  MASTER 

It  seems  likely  that  the  enduring  fame  of  the  most 
remarkable  man,  in  many  ways,  of  his  day,  will  be 
founded  chiefly  upon  his  stories  of  war  —  the  blind 
ing  flashes  of  revelation  and  interpretation  that 
make  up  the  group  under  the  laconic  legend,  "Sol 
dier,"  in  his  greatest  book,  In  the  Midst  of  Life.  In 
these  are  War,  stripped  of  pageantry  and  glamor, 
stark  in  naked  realism,  terrible  in  grewsome  fascina 
tion,  yet  of  a  sinister  beauty.  Specifically,  it  is  the 
American  Civil  War  that  furnishes  his  characters 
and  his  texts,  the  great  internecine  conflict  through 
out  which  he  gallantly  fought;  but  it  is  War  of 
which  he  writes,  the  hideous  Thing. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  attraction  of  repulsion  that, 
again  and  again,  leads  one  to  these  tales  —  although 
there  is  a  record  of  a  man  who,  having  read  them 
once,  would  not  repeat  the  experiment  —  but  it  is 
that  only  in  part.  There  is  more  than  mere  terror 
in  them;  there  is  religion  and  poetry,  and  much  of 
the  traditional  beauty  of  battle.  Their  author  was 
both  soldier  and  poet,  and  in  the  war  stories  of 
Ambrose  Bierce,  the  horror  and  ugliness,  the  lure 
and  loveliness  of  war  are  so  blended  that  there 


THE  MASTER  27 

seems  no  distinct  line  of  demarcation;  the  dividing 
line  is  not  a  point  or  sign,  but  a  penumbra.  Over 
the  whole  broods  an  occult  significance  that  tran 
scends  experience. 

Outstanding,  even  in  so  collectively  remarkable  a 
group,  are  three  stories,  "A  Horseman  in  the  Sky," 
"A  Son  of  the  Gods,"  and  "Chickamauga."  The 
first  mentioned  quietly  opens  with  a  young  soldier, 
a  Federal  sentry,  on  duty  at  a  point  in  the  moun 
tains  overlooking  a  wooded  drop  of  a  thousand  feet. 
He  is  a  Virginian  who  has  conceived  it  his  duty  to 
join  the  forces  of  the  North,  and  who  thus  finds 
himself  in  arms  against  his  family.  It  is  im 
perative  that  the  position  of  the  camp  guarded  by 
the  young  soldier  be  kept  secret;  yet  he  is  asleep  at 
his  post.  Waking,  he  looks  across  the  gorge,  and 
on  the  opposite  height  beholds  a  magnificent  eques 
trian  statue  —  a  Confederate  officer  on  horseback, 
calmly  surveying  the  camp  beneath. 

The  young  soldier,  unobserved  by  his  enemy, 
aims  at  the  officer's  breast.  But  suddenly  his  soul 
is  in  tumult;  he  is  shaken  by  convulsive  shudders. 
He  cannot  take  life  in  that  way.  If  only  the  officer 
would  see  him  and  offer  battle !  Then  he  recalls  his 
father's  admonition  at  their  parting:  at  whatever 
cost  he  must  do  his  duty.  The  horseman  in  gray 
turns  his  head.  His  features  are  easily  discernible 
now.  There  is  a  pause.  Then  the  young  soldier 
shifts  his  aim  from  the  officer's  breast  and,  with 


28  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

stony  calm,  fires  at  the  horse.    A  moment  later,  a 
Federal  officer,  some  distance  down  the  side  of  the 
cliff,  sees  an  amazing  thing  —  a  man  on  horseback, 
riding  down  into  the  valley  through  the  air. 
Here  is  the  conclusion  to  that  story : 

Ten  minutes  had  hardly  passed  when  a  Fed 
eral  sergeant  crept  cautiously  to  him  on  hands 
and  knees.  Druse  neither  turned  his  head  nor 
looked  at  him,  but  lay  without  motion  or  sign 
of  recognition. 

"Did  you  fire?"  the  sergeant  whispered. 

"Yes." 

"At  what?" 

"A  horse.  It  was  standing  on  yonder  rock 
—  pretty  far  out.  You  see  it  is  no  longer  there. 
It  went  over  the  cliff." 

The  man's  face  was  white  but  he  showed  no 
other  sign  of  emotion.  Having  answered,  he 
turned  away  his  face  and  said  no  more.  The 
sergeant  did  not  understand. 

"See  here,  Druse,"  he  said,  after  a  moment's 
silence,  "it's  no  use  making  a  mystery.  I  order 
you  to  report.  Was  there  anybody  on  the 
horse?" 

"Yes." 

"Who?" 

"My  father." 

The  sergeant  rose  to  his  feet  and  walked  away. 
"Good  God!"  he  said. 

It  may  be  claimed  that  the  idea  of  this  story  — 
its  conclusion  —  is  not  original  with  Bierce.  I  don't 
know,  although  for  all  anyone  can  say  to  the  con- 


THE  MASTER  29 

trary  the  episode  may  be  a  transcript  from  life.  Cer 
tainly,  in  this  form  it  is  original  enough.  De  Mau 
passant  contrives  the  same  sense  of  ' 'shock"  in  the 
tale  of  a  sailor  who,  after  years  of  wandering,  re 
turns  to  the  village  to  find  his  old  home  vanished, 
and  who,  in  consequence,  betakes  himself  to  a 
shadier  section  of  town.  In  the  midst  of  his  maud 
lin  carousing,  he  discovers  in  the  half-naked  creature 
he  is  fondling,  his  sister.  Remotely,  the  idea  is  the 
same  in  both  stories,  and,  I  fancy,  it  antedates  De 
Maupassant  by  hundreds  of  years.  Since  publica 
tion  of  Bierce's  tale,  young  writers  in  numbers  de 
liberately  have  sought  the  effect  (Peccavi!)  with 
tales  that  are  strangely  reminiscent;  and  Billy  Sun 
day  rhetorically  tells  a  "true  story"  of  the  same  sort, 
which  might  have  been  taken  directly  from  the 
French  master.  Thus  does  life  plagiarize  from  lit 
erature,  in  later  days,  after  literature  first  has  pla 
giarized  from  life. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  a  situation  that  was  never  better 
handled,  an  idea  never  more  cleanly  distorted,  than 
by  Bierce.  "A  Horseman  in  the  Sky"  is  one  of  the 
most  effective  of  his  astonishing  vignettes,  and  is 
given  first  place  in  the  volume.  It  has  one  objec 
tion,  which  applies  to  all  terror,  horror,  and  mystery 
tales ;  once  read,  the  secret  is  out,  and  rereading  can 
not  recapture  the  first  story  thrill.  It  may  be,  how 
ever,  that  all  literature,  of  whatever  classification, 
is  open  to  the  same  objection.  Fortunately,  as  in 


30  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

the  case  of  Bierce,  there  is  more  to  literature  than 
the  mere  "story." 

There  is  less  of  this  story  in  "A  Son  of  the  Gods," 
but  as  a  shining  glimpse  of  the  tragic  beauty  of  bat 
tle  it  is,  I  believe,  unique;  possibly  it  is  Bierce's 
finest  achievement  in  the  art  of  writing.  He  calls  it 
a  ''study  in  the  historical  present  tense."  In  order 
to  spare  the  lives  of  the  skirmishers,  a  young  staff 
officer  rides  forward  toward  the  crest  of  a  bare  ridge 
crowned  with  a  stone  wall,  to  make  the  enemy  dis 
close  himself,  if  the  enemy  is  there.  The  enemy  is 
there  and,  being  discovered,  has  no  further  reason 
for  concealment.  The  doomed  officer,  instead  of 
retreating  to  his  friends,  rides  parallel  to  the  wall, 
in  a  hail  of  rifle  fire,  and  thence  obliquely  to  other 
ridges,  to  uncover  other  concealed  batteries  and 
regiments.  .  . 

The  dust  drifts  away.  Incredible !  —  that 
enchanted  horse  and  rider  have  passed  a  ravine 
and  are  climbing  another  slope  to  unveil  an 
other  conspiracy  of  silence,  to  thwart  the  will 
of  another  armed  host.  Another  moment  and 
that  crest  too  is  in  eruption.  The  horse  rears 
and  strikes  the  air  with  its  forefeet.  They  are 
down  at  last.  But  look  again  —  the  man  has 
detached  himself  from  the  dead  animal.  He 
stands  erect,  motionless,  holding  his  sabre  in  his 
right  hand  straight  above  his  head.  His  face  is 
toward  us.  Now  he  lowers  his  hand  to  a  level 
with  his  face  and  moves  it  outward,  the  blade 
of  the  sabre  describing  a  downward  curve.  It 


THE  MASTER  31 

is  a  sign  to  us,  to  the  world,  to  posterity.    It  is 
a  hero's  salute  to  death  and  history. 

Again  the  spell  is  broken;  our  men  attempt 
to  cheer ;  they  are  choking  with  emotion ;  they 
utter  hoarse,  discordant  cries ;  they  clutch  their 
weapons  and  press  tumultuously  forward  into 
the  open.  The  skirmishers,  without  orders, 
against  orders,  are  going  forward  at  a  keen 
run,  like  hounds  unleashed.  Our  cannon  speak 
and  the  enemy's  now  open  in  full  chorus;  to 
right  and  left  as  far  as  we  can  see,  the  distant 
crest,  seeming  now  so  near,  erects  its  towers  of 
cloud,  and  the  great  shot  pitch  roaring  down 
among  our  moving  masses.  Flag  after  flag  of 
ours  emerges  from  the  wood,  line  after  line 
sweeps  forth,  catching  the  sunlight  on  its  bur 
nished  arms.  .  . 

Bierce  has  been  called  a  Martian;  a  man  who 
loved  war.  In  a  way,  I  think  he  did ;  he  was  a  born 
fighter,  and  he  fought,  as  later  he  wrote,  with  a 
suave  fierceness,  deadly,  direct,  and  unhastening. 
He  was  also  an  humane  and  tender  spirit.  As  typ 
ical  as  the  foregoing  paragraphs  are  the  following 
lines,  with  which  the  narrative  concludes: 

The  skirmishers  return,  gathering  up  the 
dead.  Ah,  those  many,  many  needless  dead! 
That  great  soul  whose  beautiful  body  is  lying 
over  yonder,  so  conspicuous  against  the  sere  hill 
side  —  could  it  not  have  been  spared  the  bitter 
consciousness  of  a  vain  devotion?  Would  one 
exception  have  marred  too  much  the  pitiless 
perfection  of  the  divine,  eternal  plan  ? 


32  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

In  his  more  genuinely  horrible  vein,  "Chicka- 
mauga"  is  unrivaled ;  a  grotesquely  shocking  account 
of  a  deaf-mute  child  who,  wandering  from  home, 
encountered  in  the  woods  a  host  of  wounded  sol 
diers  hideously  crawling  from  the  battlefield,  and 
thought  they  were  playing  a  game.  Rebuffed  by  the 
jawless  man,  upon  whose  back  he  tried  to  ride,  the 
child  ultimately  returns  to  his  home,  to  find  it 
burned  and  his  mother  slain  and  horribly  mutilated 
by  a  shell.  There  is  nothing  occult  in  this  story, 
but,  with  others  of  its  genre,  it  probes  the  very 
depths  of  material  horror. 

"An  Occurrence  at  Owl  Creek  Bridge"  is  better 
known  than  many  of  Bierce's  tales,  and  here  again 
is  a  form  that  has  attracted  imitators.  Like  a  pan- 
toum,  the  conclusion  brings  the  narrative  back  to 
its  beginning.  A  man  is  engaged  in  being  hanged, 
in  this  extraordinary  tale,  and  preparations  are  pro 
ceeding  in  a  calm  and  businesslike  manner.  An  or 
der  is  given,  and  the  man  is  dropped. 

Consciousness  returns,  and  he  feels  the  water 
about  him;  the  rope  has  broken,  he  knows,  and  he 
has  fallen  into  the  stream.  He  is  fired  upon,  but 
escapes.  After  days  of  travel  and  incredible  hard 
ship,  he  reaches  his  home.  His  wife  is  in  the  door 
way  to  greet  him,  and  he  springs  forward  with  ex 
tended  arms.  At  that  instant,  he  feels  a  stunning 
blow  on  the  back  of  his  neck,  a  blaze  of  light  is 
about  him  —  then  darkness  and  silence.  "Peyton 


THE  MASTER  33 

Farquhar  was  dead;  his  body,  with  a  broken  neck, 
swung  gently  from  side  to  side  beneath  the  timbers 
of  the  Owl  Creek  bridge." 

Again  there  is  the  sense  of  shock,  at  the  end,  as 
we  realize  that  between  the  instant  of  the  hanged 
man's  drop  and  the  succeeding  instant  of  his  death, 
he  has  lived  days  of  emotion  and  suspense. 

The  tales  of  civilians,  which  make  up  the  second 
half  of  Bierce's  greatest  book,  are  of  a  piece  with 
his  war  stories.  Probably  nothing  more  weirdly 
awful  has  been  conceived  than  such  tales  as  "A 
Watcher  by  the  Dead,"  "The  Man  and  the  Snake," 
and  "The  Boarded  Window,"  unless  it  be  Steven 
son's  "The  Body  Snatcher."  The  volume  entitled 
Can  Such  Things  Be?  contains  several  similar 
stories,  although,  as  a  whole,  it  is  apocryphal.  In 
"The  Mocking  Bird"  we  find  again  the  motif  of 
"A  Horseman  in  the  Sky;"  in  "The  Death  of  Hal- 
pin  Frayser"  there  is  a  haunting  detail  and  a  grew- 
some  imagery  that  suggest  Poe,  and  in  "My  Fa 
vorite  Murder,"  one  of  the  best  tales  Bierce  ever 
wrote,  there  is  a  satirical  whimsicality  and  a  cynical 
brutality  that  make  the  tale  an  authentic  master 
piece  of  something  —  perhaps  humor ! 

"A  literary  quality  that  is  a  consecration,"  re 
marked  one  critic,  of  Bierce's  method  and  method- 
results.  That  is  better  than  speaking  of  his  "style," 
for  I  think  the  miracle  of  Bierce's  fascination  is  as 
much  a  lack  of  what  is  called  style  as  anything  else. 


34  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

The  clarity  and  directness  of  his  thought  and  ex 
pression,  and  the  nervous  strength  and  purity  of  his 
diction,  are  the  most  unmistakable  characteristics 
of  his  manner. 

Bierce  the  satirist  is  seen  in  nearly  all  of  his 
stories,  but  in  Fantastic  Fables,  and  The  Devil's 
Dictionary  we  have  satire  bereft  of  romantic  asso 
ciation;  the  keenest  satire  since  Swift,  glittering, 
bitter,  venomous,  but  thoroughly  honest.  His 
thrusts  are  at  and  through  the  heart  of  sham.  A 
beautiful  specimen  of  his  temper  is  the  following 
fable: 

An  Associate  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
was  sitting  by  a  river  when  a  traveler  ap 
proached  and  said: 

"I  wish  to  cross.  Would  it  be  lawful  to  use 
this  boat?" 

"It  would,"  was  the  reply,  "it  is  my  boat." 
The  traveler  thanked  him,  and  pushing  the 
boat  into  the  water,  embarked  and  rowed  away. 
But  the  boat  sank  and  he  was  drowned. 

"Heartless  man !"  said  an  Indignant  Spec 
tator,  "why  did  you  not  tell  him  that  your  boat 
had  a  hole  in  it?" 

"The  matter  of  the  boat's  condition,"  said 
the  great  jurist,  "was  not  brought  before  me." 
The  same  cynical  humor  is  revealed  in  the  intro 
ductory  paragraphs  of  the  story  already  referred  to, 
called   "My  Favorite  Murder."     The  solemn  ab 
surdities  of  the  law  were  Bierce 's  frequent  target; 
thus,   in  his  Devil's  Dictionary,   the   definition   of 


THE  MASTER  35 

the  phrase  "court  fool"  is,  laconically,  "the  plain 
tiff."  His  biting  wit  is  nowhere  better  evidenced 
than  in  this  mocking  lexicon.  Bacchus,  he  conceives 
to  be  "a  convenient  deity  invented  by  the  ancients 
as  an  excuse  for  getting  drunk;"  and  a  Prelate  is 
"a  church  officer  having  a  superior  degree  of  holi 
ness  and  a  fat  preferment.  One  of  Heaven's  aris 
tocracy.  A  gentleman  of  God."  More  humor 
ously,  a  Garter  is  "an  elastic  band  intended  to  keep 
a  woman  from  coming  out  of  her  stockings  and  des 
olating  the  country." 

In  the  same  key  are  his  collected  epigrams,  in 
which  we  learn  that  "woman  would  be  more  charm 
ing  if  one  could  fall  into  her  arms  without  falling 
into  her  hands." 

With  all  forms  of  literary  expression,  Bierce  ex 
perimented  successfully;  but  in  verse  his  percentage 
of  permanent  contributions  is  smaller  than  in  any 
other  department.  His  output,  while  enormous, 
was  for  the  most  part  ephemeral,  and  the  wisdom 
of  collecting  even  the  least  of  his  jingles  may  well 
be  called  into  question.  At  least  half  of  the  hun 
dreds  of  verses  contained  in  the  two  volumes  of  his 
collected  works  given  over  to  poetry,  might  have 
been  left  for  collectors  to  discover  and  resurrect; 
and  some  delightful  volumes  of  juvenilia  and  ana 
thus  might  have  been  posthumously  achieved  for  him 
by  the  collecting  fraternity.  But,  "someone  will 
surely  search  them  out  and  put  them  into  circula- 


36  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

tion,"  said  their  author,  in  defense  of  their  publica 
tion  in  the  definitive  edition,  and  there  they  are,  the 
good,  the  bad,  and  the  indifferent. 

Happily,  in  the  ocean  of  newspaper  jingles  and 
rhymed  quips  there  is  much  excellent  poetry.  Kip 
ling,  by  some,  is  asserted  to  have  derived  his  "Re 
cessional"  from  Bierce's  "Invocation,"  a  noble  and 
stately  poem;  and  in  "The  Passing  Show,"  "Finis 
^Eternitatis,"  and  some  of  the  sonnets  we  have 
poetry  of  a  high  order.  Maugre,  we  have  much 
excellent  satire  in  many  of  his  journalistic  rhymes. 
Like  Swift  and  Butler,  and  Pope  and  Byron,  Bierce 
gibbeted  a  great  many  nobodies;  but,  as  he  himself 
remarks,  "satire,  like  other  arts,  is  its  own  excuse, 
and  is  not  dependent  for  its  interest  on  the  person 
ality  of  those  who  supply  the  occasion  for  it."  If 
many  of  Bierce's  Black  Beetles  in  Amber  seem 
flat,  many  too  are  as  virile  and  keen  as  when  they 
were  written;  and  if  he  flayed  men  alive,  just  as 
certainly  he  raised  the  moral  tone  of  the  community 
he  dominated  in  a  manner  the  value  of  which  is 
perhaps  measureless. 

The  best  example  of  poetry,  however,  left  us  by 
Bierce,  me  judice,  is  that  great  prose  poem,  The 
Monk  and  the  Hangman's  Daughter.  This  work 
is  the  joint  production  of  Bierce  and  G.  Adolphe 
Danziger.  The  latter  translated  it  from  the  Ger 
man  of  Prof.  Richard  Voss  and,  I  believe,  elab 
orated  it.  Being  unsure  of  his  English,  Danziger 


THE  MASTER  37 

gave  it  over  to  Bierce  for  revision.  Bierce,  too, 
elaborated  it,  practically  rewriting  it,  he  testified,  as 
well  as  changing  it  materially.  There  was  discussion 
about  authorship  honors ;  but  the  book  is  a  bit  of  lit 
erary  art  that  is  a  credit  to  all  three  men,  and  that 
would  be  a  credit  to  six.  The  world  would  be 
poorer  without  this  delicate  and  lovely  romance. 
Saturated  with  the  color  and  spirit  of  the  mediaeval 
days  it  depicts,  it  is  as  authentic  a  classic  as  Aucassm 
and  Nicolette;  and  its  denouement  is  as  terrible  as 
it  is  beautiful.  The  strange  story  of  Ambrosius  the 
monk,  and  the  outcast  girl  Benedicta,  "the  hang 
man's  daughter,"  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  lit 
erature. 

Ambrose  Bierce  was  a  great  writer  and  a  great 
man.  He  was  a  great  master  of  English;  but  it  is 
difficult  to  place  him.  He  is  possibly  the  most  ver 
satile  genius  in  American  letters.  He  is  the  equal 
of  Stevenson  in  weird,  shadowy  effect,  and  in  ex 
pression  he  is  Stevenson's  superior.  Those  who  com 
pare  his  work  with  that  of  Stephen  Crane  (in  his 
war  stories)  have  not  read  him  understandingly. 
Crane  was  a  fine  and  original  genius,  but  he  was, 
and  is,  the  pupil  where  Bierce  is  Master.  Bierce's 
"style"  is  simpler  and  less  spasmodic  than  Crane's, 
and  Bierce  brought  to  his  labor  a  first-hand  knowl 
edge  of  war,  and  an  imagination  more  terrible  even 
than  that  which  gave  us  The  Red  Badge  of  Cour 
age.  The  horrors  of  both  men  sometimes  transcend 


38  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

artistic  effect;  but  their  works  are  enduring  peace 
tracts. 

It  has  been  said  that  Bierce's  stories  are  "form 
ula,"  and  it  is  in  a  measure  true;  but  the  formula 
is  that  of  a  master  chemist,  and  it  is  inimitable.  He 
set  the  pace  for  the  throng  of  satirical  fabulists  who 
have  since  written ;  and  his  essays,  of  which  nothing 
has  been  said,  are  powerful,  of  immense  range,  and 
of  impeccable  diction.  His  influence  on  the  writers 
of  his  time,  while  unacknowledged,  is  wide.  Rarely 
did  he  attempt  anything  sustained ;  his  work  is  com 
posed  of  keen,  darting  fragments.  His  only  novel 
is  a  redaction.  But  who  shall  complain,  when  his 
fragments  are  so  perfect? 


III.    THE  MYSTERY 

In  the  fall  of  the  year  1913,  Ambrose  Bierce,  be 
ing  then  some  months  past  his  seventy-first  birthday 
anniversary,  started  for  Mexico.  He  had  for  some 
time,  and  with  keen  interest,  followed  the  fortunes 
of  the  revolutionary  cause  headed  by  Francisco 
Villa;  and  he  believed  that  cause  a  just  one. 
From  various  points  along  the  line  of  his  jour 
ney,  before  he  reached  the  southern  republic,  Bierce 
wrote  to  his  friends.  In  December  of  1913  the  last 
letter  he  is  known  to  have  written  was  received  by 
his  daughter.  It  was  dated  the  month  of  its  re 
ceipt,  and  from  Chihuahua,  Mexico.  In  it  Bierce 
mentioned,  casually  enough,  that  he  had  attached 
himself,  unofficially,  to  a  division  of  Villa's  army  — 
the  exact  capacity  of  his  service  is  not  known  — 
and  spoke  of  a  prospective  advance  on  Ojinaga.  The 
rest  is  silence. 

No  further  word,  bearing  the  unmistakable 
stamp  of  authenticity,  ever  has  come  out  of  Mexico. 
There  have  been  rumors  without  number,  even  long 
categorical  accounts  of  his  death  at  the  hands  of  the 
revolutionists,  but  all  must  be  called  false.  There 
is  in  them  not  the  faintest  ring  of  truth.  They  rep- 


40  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

resent  merely  the  inevitable  speculation,  and  the  in 
evitable  "fakes"  of  unscrupulous  correspondents. 
Typical  of  the  innumerable  "clews"  offered  is  the 
following:  One  newspaper  correspondent  in  El 
Paso  reported  that  a  second  correspondent  had  told 
him  that  he  (the  second  correspondent)  had  seen 
and  talked  with  Bierce  before  the  author  passed  into 
Mexico;  that  Bierce  had  declared  he  would  offer 
his  services  to  the  revolutionary  cause,  and  that, 
failing  to  make  such  a  connection,  he  would  "crawl 
into  some  out-of-the-way  hole  in  the  mountains  and 
die."  The  author  of  these  pages  hastily  communi 
cated  with  the  second  correspondent,  and  the  second 
correspondent,  in  a  positive  communication,  vowed 
that  he  had  never  seen  Bierce,  nor  had  he  heard  the 
story  of  Bierce's  reported  utterance. 

The  most  elaborate  account  of  Bierce's  "death" 
was  quoted  in  full  from  the  Mexican  Review,  by 
the  Washington  Post,  under  date  of  April  27,  1919. 
Its  extraordinary  detail  gives  it  a  semblance  of 
truth  that  other  accounts  have  lacked,  and,  without 
intending  to  perpetuate  a  story  which  Bierce's 
friends  and  relatives  do  not  for  a  moment  believe,  I 
reproduce  it  in  its  ungrammatical  entirety: 

A  short  time  since  the  Review  editor  was 
conversing  with  a  friend,  a  former  officer  in  the 
constitutionalist  army,  and  casually  asked  him 
if  he  had  ever  heard  of  an  American  named 
Ambrose  Bierce.  To  his  surprise  he  replied 


THE  MYSTERY  41 

that  he  had  met  him  several  times  and  had  be 
come  quite  well  acquainted  with  him.  This 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  Bierce  could  speak  lit 
tle  if  any  Spanish,  while  the  officer  is  well  edu 
cated  and  speaks  English  fluently. 

The  latter  declared  that  he  saw  and  talked 
with  Bierce  several  times  in  the  vicinity  of  Chi 
huahua  late  in  1913  or  early  in  1914.  Later  — 
1915 — he  met  a  sergeant  of  Villa's  army,  an 
old  acquaintance,  and  this  man  told  him  about 
having  witnessed  the  execution  of  an  American 
who  corresponded  in  every  manner  with 
Bierce's  description. 

This  affair  took  place  near  Icamole,  a  vil 
lage  in  the  region  of  Monterey  and  Saltillo, 
east  of  Chihuahua  state,  in  August,  1915.  The 
constitutionalists  occupied  that  village  while 
Gen.  Tomas  Urbina,  one  of  Villa's  most  blood 
thirsty  fellows,  was  nearby  and  between  that 
place  and  the  border. 

One  day  an  American,  accompanied  by  a 
Mexican,  convoying  four  mules,  on  one  of 
which  was  a  machine  gun,  while  the  others 
were  loaded  with  ammunition,  was  captured  on 
the  trail,  headed  toward  Icamole,  and  taken  be 
fore  Urbina.  The  Mexican  told  Urbina  that 
he  had  been  engaged  by  another  Mexican  to 
guide  the  mules  and  the  American  to  the  con 
stitutionalist  camp  at  Icamole.  That  was  all 
he  knew.  The  American  apparently  could  not 
speak  or  understand  any  Spanish,  and  made  no 
intelligent  reply  to  the  questions  asked  him. 

The  bloodthirsty  Urbina,  who  was  never  so 
happy  as  when  killing  some  one  himself  or  or- 


42  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

dering  it  to  be  done,  wearied  of  questioning  the 
prisoners  and  ordered  them  to  be  shot  at  once. 

The  two  were  stood  up  in  front  of  a  firing 
squad,  where  the  Mexican  threw  himself  on  his 
knees,  stretched  out  his  arms,  and  refused  to 
have  his  eyes  bandaged,  saying  he  wanted  to 
"see  himself  killed."  All  he  asked  was  that 
his  face  be  not  mutilated,  which  was  not  done. 

Seeing  his  companion  on  his  knees,  the  Amer 
ican  followed  suit,  but  the  Mexican  told  him 
to  stand  up.  He  did  not  understand  what  was 
said,  but  remained  on  his  knees,  arms  out 
stretched,  like  his  companion,  and  with  unban- 
daged  eyes  he  met  his  death  at  the  hands  of  the 
firing  squad.  The  two  victims  were  buried  by 
the  side  of  the  trail. 

The  sergeant  who  witnessed  the  affair  de 
scribed  Bierce  exactly,  though  he  had  never  seen 
him  to  his  knowledge.  Incidentally  it  may  be 
stated  that  Urbina  himself  soon  after  met  his 
death  by  Villa's  orders  at  the  hands  of  the  no 
torious  "Matador  Fierro." 

It  is  to  be  doubted  whether  Villa  ever  knew 
about  this  double  execution,  such  affairs  being 
common  enough  at  that  time. 

Inquiry  is  now  being  made  for  the  sergeant 
in  question,  in  order  that  further  details  of  the 
affair  may  be  secured,  as  well  as  information  re 
garding  the  exact  locality  of  the  execution  and 
the  burial  place  of  the  two  victims. 
Only  two  things  need  to  be  considered  in  refuting 
the  foregoing  narrative.     First,  this  is  only  one  of  a 
great  many  stories,  despite  its  painstaking  vraisem- 


THE  MYSTERY  43 

blance;  and,  second,  the  execution  is  dated  in  the 
fall  of  1915,  approximately  two  years  after  Bierce's 
last  letter.  Had  Ambrose  Bierce  been  alive  in  1915, 
had  he  been  living  at  almost  any  time  between  the 
date  of  his  last  letter  and  the  reported  date  of  his 
death,  he  would  have  sent  some  communication  to 
his  friends  and  relatives.  This  is  recognized  by  all 
who  knew  him  best,  and  is  the  final  answer  to  the 
extravagant  chronicle  in  the  Mexican  Review.  It 
may  be  remarked,  however,  in  passing,  that  the  care 
fully  detailed  account  is  just  such  a  tale  as  might 
have  been  constructed  by  a  press  agent  eager  to  lift 
the  onus  of  Bierce's  disappearance  from  official  Mex 
ican  shoulders;  and  of  such  paid  press  agents  there 
have  been  many.  It  will  be  noted  that  care  is  taken 
to  report  also  the  execution  of  Urbina,  and  even  to 
"whitewash"  Villa,  although  I  believe  the  propa 
ganda  to  have  been  Carranzista. 

This  careful  piece  of  imagination  was  followed 
closely  by  a  still  more  carefully  elaborated  account 
of  the  same  story.  Written  by  James  H.  Wilkins, 
it  appeared  in  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin  of  March 
24,  1920.  Wilkins  quotes  George  F.  Weeks,  who 
was  probably  responsible  for  the  former  story,  since 
he  was  editor  of  the  Mexican  Review,  speaks  of 
Major  Bierce  as  having  been  military  advisor  to 
Carranza,  and  dwells  at  length  on  Bierce's  alleged 
expressed  desire  to  "die  in  battle."  One  Edmundo 
Melero,  an  associate  editor  of  the  Mexican  Review, 


44  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

is  declared  to  have  been  with  Bierce  almost  from 
the  moment  of  his  arrival  in  Mexico,  but  as  Melero 
died  of  pneumonia  the  day  after  Wilkins  arrived  in 
Mexico  City  (I  am  quoting  Wilkins's  story),  Wil 
kins  could  not  interview  him.  Fortunately,  Weeks 
knew  all  that  Melero  could  have  told,  and  Weeks 
told  Wilkins  that  Melero  had  been  seeking  a  Mex 
ican,  then  in  Mexico  City,  who  had  been  present  at 
the  attack  on  the  mule  train  when  Bierce  was  "cap 
tured"  and  "executed." 

To  find  this  Indian  in  a  city  of  a  million  souls 
was  no  trick  for  Wilkins,  and  the  discovered  eye 
witness  repeated  the  story  I  have  already  quoted, 
with  unimportant  variations.  The  convenient  In 
dian  then  produced  a  photograph  of  Ambrose 
Bierce,  which  had  been  among  the  effects  taken 
from  the  "body."  Wilkins  identified  it  at  once. 
But  the  Indian  would  not  part  with  it ;  he  preferred 
to  destroy  the  photograph,  believing  it  had  served 
its  purpose,  and  fearing  consequences  to  himself 
when  the  Wilkins  revelation  was  published.  This 
photograph  was  the  sensation  of  the  Wilkins  story, 
which  otherwise  was  the  same  story  as  formerly 
told. 

A  friend  of  mine  in  California  fairly  rushed  this 
article  to  me,  saying,  "Wilkins  is  an  old  and  reliable 
journalist."  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deny  either  his 
age  or  his  reliability,  but  I  will  casually  suggest 


THE  MYSTERY  45 

that  if  he  is  reliable  he  is  extraordinarily  gullible, 
whatever  his  age. 

One  remarkable  story  came  privately  to  me,  and 
was  to  the  positive  effect  that  Ambrose  Bierce  had 
been  alive  and  well  in  San  Luis  Potosi,  as  late  as 
December  of  1918,  five  years  after  his  disappearance 
and  after  his  last  letter  to  his  friends.  The  narra 
tor  of  that  tale  believed  him  to  be  still  living  ( May, 
1920),  and  ready  to  come  back  and  astound  the 
world  when  his  "death"  had  been  sufficiently  ad 
vertised.  There  were  many  details  to  the  story, 
and  another  Mexican  figured.  This  Mexican  had 
seen  a  portrait  of  Bierce  in  the  story-teller's  office, 
had  exclaimed  at  sight  of  it,  and  had  told  of  know 
ing  the  original;  Bierce  and  this  Indian,  it  devel 
oped,  had  parted  company  in  San  Luis  Potosi  in 
December  of  1918!  The  Major  was  known  to  the 
Mexican  as  "Don  Ambrosio."  But  this  Mexican 
was  murdered  in  Los  Angeles,  in  a  triangular  love 
scrape,  as  was  attested  surely  enough  by  a  newspaper 
account  of  his  murder,  so  the  narrator's  chief  wit 
ness  had  vanished.  This  investigator,  too,  was,  at 
least,  too  credible ;  although  he  was  shrewd  enough 
to  see  through  the  Weeks  and  Wilkins  stones,  and  to 
tear  them  to  pieces.  Certainly  he  knew  better  than 
to  accuse  Bierce  of  seeking  morbid  publicity. 

Other  extraordinary  tales  there  have  been,  and  a 
dispatch  to  the  New  York  World  of  April  3,  1915, 


46  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

dated  from  Bloomington,  Illinois,  soberly  recited 
that  Mrs.  H.  D.  Cowden  of  that  city,  Bierce's 
daughter,  had  received  a  letter  from  her  father 
which  entirely  cleared  the  mystery  of  his  dis 
appearance.  He  was  even  then  in  France,  it 
seemed,  an  officer  on  Lord  Kitchener's  staff,  had 
escaped  injury,  and  was  in  good  health.  Yet  from 
Mrs.  Cowden's  own  lips  I  have  had  it  that  no  such 
letter,  no  such  information  conveyed  in  whatever 
manner,  had  ever  reached  her.  A  later  story  re 
ported  that  Bierce  had  perished  with  Kitchener, 
when  the  great  soldier  was  drowned. 

This  is  all  sensational  journalism.  There  is  every 
reason  to  doubt  that  Bierce  ever  left  Mexico;  that 
he  long  survived  his  last  bit  of  letter-writing  —  the 
brief  communication  to  his  daughter,  in  December 
of  1913.  The  manner  of  his  passing  probably  never 
will  be  known,  but  it  is  to  be  recalled  that  he  suf 
fered  from  asthma,  and  that  he  was  more  than 
seventy-one  years  of  age  when  he  went  away.  Were 
he  alive  in  the  year  1920  he  would  be  78  years  old. 

There  is  one  further  consideration:  Did  Bierce, 
when  he  went  into  Mexico,  expect  to  return  ?  Did 
he  go,  calmly  and  deliberatly,  to  his  death?  Did 
he,  indeed,  seek  death?  The  question  has  been 
raised,  and  so  it  must  be  answered.  In  support  of 
the  contention,  two  highly  significant  letters  have 
been  offered.  These  were  received  by  Mrs.  Jose 
phine  Clifford  McCrackin  of  San  Jose,  California, 


THE  MYSTERY  47 

long  a  warm  friend  of  the  vanished  author,  and 
there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  of  their  authen 
ticity.  The  first,  chronologically,  is  dated  from 
Washington,  September  10,  1913,  and  is  as  follows: 

Dear  Joe :  The  reason  that  I  did  not  answer 
your  letter  sooner  is  —  I  have  been  away  (in 
New  York)  and  did  not  have  it  with  me.  I 
suppose  I  shall  not  see  your  book  for  a  long 
time,  for  I  am  going  away  and  have  no  notion 
when  I  shall  return.  I  expect  to  go  to,  perhaps 
across,  South  America  —  possibly  via  Mexico, 
if  I  can  get  through  without  being  stood  up 
against  a  wall  and  shot  as  a  gringo.  But  that  is 
better  than  dying  in  bed,  is  it  not?  If  Dune 
did  not  need  you  so  badly  I'd  ask  you  to  get 
your  hat  and  come  along.  God  bless  and  keep 
you. 

The  faint  suggestion  in  this  letter  is  more  clearly 
defined  in  the  second  and  last  letter  received  by 
Mrs.  McCrackin,  three  days  later: 

Dear  Joe :  Thank  you  for  the  book.  I  thank 
you  for  your  friendship  —  and  much  besides. 
This  is  to  say  good-by  at  the  end  of  a  pleasant 
correspondence  in  which  your  woman's  prerog 
ative  of  having  the  last  word  is  denied  to  you. 
Before  I  could  receive  it  I  shall  be  gone.  But 
some  time,  somewhere,  I  hope  to  hear  from  you 
again.  Yes,  I  shall  go  into  Mexico  with  a 
pretty  definite  purpose,  which,  however,  is  not 
at  present  disclosable.  You  must  try  to  forgive 
my  obstinacy  in  not  "perishing"  where  I  am. 
I  want  to  be  where  something  worth  while  is 
going  on,  or  where  nothing  whatever  is  going 


48  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

on.     Most  of  what  is  going  on  in  your  own 
country  is  exceedingly  distasteful  to  me. 

Pray  for  me?     Why,  yes,  dear  —  that  will 
not  harm  either  of  us.     I  loathe  religions,  a 
Christian  gives  me  qualms  and  a  Catholic  sets 
my  teeth  on  edge,  but  pray  for  me  just  the 
same,  for  with  all  those  faults  upon  your  head 
(it's  a  nice  head,  too),  I  am  pretty  fond  of  you, 
I  guess.    May  you  live  as  long  as  you  want  to, 
and  then  pass  smilingly  into  the  darkness  —  the 
good,  good  darkness.     Devotedly  your  friend. 
He  goes  "with  a  pretty  definite  purpose;"  his 
"obstinacy"  will  not  allow  him  to  perish  in  Wash 
ington,  and  death  at  the  hands  of  the  Mexicans  is 
"better  than  dying  in  bed."    He  wishes  to  be  where 
something  worth  while  is  going  on,  or  "where  noth 
ing  whatever  is  going  on ;"  and,  finally,  there  is  the 
reference  to  the  "good,  good  darkness/* 

Yet  also  he  had  announced  his  intention,  if  pos 
sible,  to  cross  South  America. 

It  is  difficult  to  get  away  from  the  hints  in  those 
two  letters;  and  the  assumption  that  Bierce  knew 
he  would  not  return  is  inescapable.  But  to  assume 
that  he  cordially  sought  death  is  another  matter. 
He  would  be  ready  for  it  when  it  came,  he  would 
pass  smilingly  into  the  "good,  good  darkness,"  but 
does  anyone  who  knows  Ambrose  Bierce  or  his  work 
suppose  that  he  would  encourage,  let  us  say,  his  own 
murder?  That  he  would  rush  into  battle,  let  us 
say,  hoping  for  a  friendly  bullet  through  his  heart? 


THE  MYSTERY  49 

That  his  passing  was,  in  effect,  a  suicide,  although 
the  hand  may  have  been  another  than  his  own? 
Ambrose  Bierce's  friends  do  not  think  so,  and  they 
are  right.  His  "good-by"  to  his  friends  was  real 
enough,  but  all  he  certainly  knew  was  that  some 
where,  some  time,  perhaps  in  a  few  months,  perhaps 
in  a  year  or  two,  death  would  overtake  him,  and  that 
he  would  not  have  returned  to  his  home.  That 
death  did  come  to  him,  not  long  after  he  wrote  the 
last  letter  received  by  his  daughter,  we  must  believe. 

If  he  was  murdered  by  bandits,  and  had  a  chance 
for  life,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  there  was  a  fight. 
If  he  died  of  disease,  which  is  not  at  all  improbable, 
he  regretted  his  inability  to  write.  Bierce  was  not 
cruel  to  his  friends. 

It  is  likely  that  the  disappearance  is  complete, 
that  the  mystery  never  will  be  solved.  The  United 
States  government's  investigation  has  come  to  noth 
ing,  and  indeed  it  has  been  lax  enough. 

Ambrose  Bierce  was  born  in  Meiggs  County, 
Ohio,  June  24,  1842,  son  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and 
Laura  (Sherwood)  Bierce.  He  died  —  where? 
And  when?  Or  is  he  dead?  The  time  for  hope 
would  seem  to  have  passed.  One  thinks  of  that 
grim  prophecy,  years  ago;  and  there  has  been  no 
wireless. 

Setting  aside  the  grief  of  friends  and  relatives, 
there  is  something  terribly  beautiful  and  fitting  in 
the  manner  of  the  passing  of  Ambrose  Bierce;  a 


50  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

tragically  appropriate  conclusion  to  a  life  of  erratic 
adventure  and  high  endeavor.  Soldier-fighter  and 
soldier-writer.  Scotson  Clark's  well-known  carica 
ture  of  Bierce  dragging  a  pen  from  a  scabbard  is 
the  undying  portrait  of  the  man. 


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